Bluebirds
by AppleCiderVinegar
Summary: *As seen on the Hetalia Kink Meme*  Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy... 1939. England and America's son wants nothing more than to serve in the RAF. 1940. He gets his wish.  Contains: Mpreg
1. Chapter 1

_15 September, 1945_

It was a gorgeous sunny day. There were clouds in the sky, but they were the harmless, candy-floss type. The sky was bright, blazing blue, a rarity for England's weather, but fitting nonetheless. On the type of day when it had every right to rain, the weather had to turn for the better as if trying to paint the beauty of the setting.

In stark contrast to its circumstances, clearly.

Arthur Kirkland was wearing his dress uniform and standing on a hill overlooking the Biggin Hill airport. He had been surprised at how few strings he had to pull to arrange this, actually. But then, the entire country was in euphoria due to the recent victory, and his boss and the RAF, once they knew the unorthodox reason behind the request, had been more than willing to grant him clearance for these few hours.

Alfred was somewhere in the airport now, getting ready. He had fought most of the remnant of the Pacific theatre, and he was probably tired after bringing about the end of the war a month ago, but he needed to be here, at this airport, on the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

He was going to fly today, while Arthur stood on the ground beneath.

Arthur Kirkland and Alfred F. Jones were getting ready to lay the remains of their only child to rest.

* * *

><p><em>5 September, 1919<em>

It had taken thirty long, hard hours of agonizing, crippling back labour, at least three sets of linens, and more blood and fluids than Arthur was comfortable with, but finally, _finally_, the child he had carried within him for nine months was born, blood-slicked and squalling, currently cradled in its father's arms.

Arthur leaned back against the headboard of his bed, letting his head fall with a solid 'thunk'. His fringe was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and he didn't quite have his breath back yet. Alfred was being oddly quiet and serious, kneeling there between Arthur's legs with a wailing baby in his arms (at least the crying assuaged Arthur's immediate fear that something was wrong with the baby).

"Arthur, I...I'm sorry," he said suddenly. Arthur's blood ran cold.

"What for?" he asked. "Alfred, what's wrong?" he asked. Alfred looked up from the baby in his arms, and exhausted, now worried green eyes met blue eyes hidden behind Texas' lenses.

"I'm sorry that you still won't have anyone to do your embroidery and knitting with," he said, and then his face broke out into a grin that splashed cool relief over Arthur's frazzled nerves like sunbeams. "'Cause we've got one handsome little devil here."

"A...a boy?" Arthur asked, too tired to be offended, and Alfred shifted so that he could hold the baby out and put him on Arthur's stomach.

"See for yourself." Sure enough, the squirming little newborn, squinting and trying to make sense out of the bright new world around him, was a little boy. He smiled and wished that the cord that still made them one wasn't so short. Gently, he cupped the tiny, cone-shaped head in one hand. The baby rooted against his hand when he ran his thumb over one fat cheek.

"God, he's...beautiful," he breathed. Alfred pressed a loving kiss to Arthur's knee.

"Like his Ma'," he quipped, and got glared at. Arthur couldn't help but wonder, as he stared at the face of his newborn son: how long would it be like this? Was this...a _family_? His country was still tired and recovering from the Great War, while Alfred seemed to be better than ever. And together, after one night, drunk on the ecstasy of having just won the war, they had...created the perfect little creature lying on Arthur's stomach. His heart swelled to the point that he felt it might burst.

Whatever this was, he wished it could last forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Alfred gave his son a model aeroplane for his fifth birthday, and from the moment that he laid hands on that first plane ("This is the kind that Daddy flew, helping Ma out in the War"), little Charlie Kirkland was obsessed with flying. He would greedily devour anything about aeroplanes that he could get his little hands on. He had more model aeroplanes than he had places to put them – they hung from his ceiling, they sat on his bookshelves, and all of the ones that had no permanent home sat in a shoebox in his closet until that day when he hoped that his mother would let him cover the rest of the house in them.

Arthur, more of a land and sea man himself (exclusively sea, used to be, but since 1912 he'd been a Royal Army man instead), didn't share his little son's passion. Among the things he did manage to instil in the boy were what Alfred liked to call "a raging tea addiction", a lack of skill in the kitchen to the point that that in and of itself became a skill, and an unwavering belief in the supernatural. Charlie couldn't _see_ the Fae, but the important part was that he believed that they were there.

Charlie was the spitting image of his father. Alfred would come to visit whenever he could, which was usually around Charlie's birthday. When the two were together, it was obvious where Charlie got his golden hair, and his blue-sky eyes. Little Charlie reminded Arthur so much of a younger Alfred from back when Arthur was Alfred's whole world. Those big blue eyes and that wide sunlight smile that trusted and loved Arthur unconditionally, that overexuberant personality determined to fix all of the wrongs in the world, all of it came together so that, when Charlie and Alfred were together, Arthur couldn't for the life of him see a single trace of his own influence in the boy.

Since Charlie lived with his Mum, Arthur, in the little house in London where he was born, Arthur was responsible for the boy's schooling. He took it upon himself to educate him at home, for a while, and by the time the boy was 13 he had been accepted into the illustrious Cheltenham College. It was 1933: America was three years into the Great Depression and had just inaugurated a bloke named Roosevelt to fix the problems that the President before him had made.

And Germany had just elected some art school dropout.

But Charlie was only thirteen years old, and he knew nothing of the affairs of Nations and their people. He knew that his parents were Nations, which was why his father couldn't be around all the time, but he was blessed with that incomprehension which comes from being raised around an oddity. It was that same mental censor which kept him from questioning why his mother was a man.

Charlie wasn't interested in Cheltenham because of its prestige. Charlie had never given up his childhood dream of becoming a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and so when he learnt of Cheltenham's military history, he saw it as the next logical step toward becoming a pilot someday like his father.

Arthur, bursting at the seams as he was with pride that his darling boy had been accepted into Cheltenham, was also struck with a fit of panic and remorse that his Charlie was almost a man. Thirteen years were nothing in the life of a Nation, but they meant the difference between an hours-old infant and a healthy thirteen-year-old boy with a passion for aeroplanes and a dream to serve in the Royal Air Force.

Struck with a fit of remorse and remembrance of another golden-haired boy who had grown up while he wasn't around, Arthur almost didn't let Charlie go off to school.

But Charlie was adamant about going – and it wasn't as if he was leaving the country, even if Gloucestershire seemed like a million miles away from London. So Arthur let him go. But he made him promise to write every day, and to mind his school masters and get along with his house-mates. In that way that all thirteen-year-old boys do, Charlie agreed with much huffing and puffing.

But he was one of the rare ones who actually did as he was told.

Charlie shone at Cheltenham, and particularly in maths and sciences. He wasn't a rugby star, but he played, and Arthur unfailingly made it to his games.

In 1936, Charlie told Arthur that the RAF had all but recruited him. He had to test into Cranwell, but they guaranteed that if he made it through the two years of training, he would be an officer by the time he was twenty. But Arthur didn't like this idea. He didn't want his seventeen-year-old son joining the military. Not even when he was eighteen, or nineteen. He couldn't stop him after he was twenty-one, but...

Arthur felt a war brewing in his bones, stirring his marrow. The reports from Germany were becoming more and more worrisome by the day, and if worst did come to worst, Arthur did _not_ want his son involved.

Charlie was smart, though. He appealed to his father, who wasn't close enough to see the trouble brewing in Europe. And somehow, despite all protestations, Alfred convinced Arthur to let Charlie become a pilot. After all, Alfred said with that cheeky Hollywood grin, it was only natural for him to want to follow in his father's footsteps. Mostly, it was the ultimatum that convinced Arthur to cave: if Arthur wouldn't let Charlie join the RAF, then Alfred would pay Charlie's way to be a pilot in the Army Air Corps.

In 1937, Charlie graduated from Cheltenham and sat his exams for Cranwell. He passed with flying colours. He continued to send Arthur letters every day like clockwork, and Arthur sent him letters, and packages for special occasions, and occasionally even used his connections to enquire after his boy's well-being. And Charlie thrived, making friends out of the other boys in his class and charming everyone with his bright smile and sharp mind. By the time that Charlie Kirkland graduated from Royal Air Force Cranwell in 1939, he was a commissioned Flying Officer.

And the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany.


	3. Chapter 3

_8 September, 1940_

After the disaster and following near-miraculous rescue at Dunkirk, Arthur Kirkland was evacuated from his little house in London to the countryside, for his own safety. Fighting a war with Nations involved was like playing a child's game of Capture the Flag: capturing the Nation didn't necessarily mean winning the war, but it put the government of the country in a compromising position. And with England (the country) on the defensive at the moment, keeping the Nation out of harm's way was really just common sense.

Meaning Arthur was temporarily pulled out of active duty and evacuated upon his return from Dunkirk. Which was a nice way to say "locked up in a cottage in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but fret" (But no, he wasn't resentful at all). There were two ways that he could communicate quickly with the outside world. He had a phone in the house, which had caused a lot of fuss and bother in the neighbourhood, but his boss had provided it in case. He had a radio, which was not as unusual, and the programmes he listened to proved how determined and unflappable his people truly were. The hair rose on the back of his neck as he listened every night.. He tried to occupy his hands as he sat next to it every night. But his hands were shaking too hard to do his embroidery, and he could never manage more than a row or two of knitting. (He kept making sock after sock anymore, hoping that when he eventually ran out of yarn he would have an even number of socks.)

He hadn't spoken to Alfred in months. Not since before Dunkirk. The git didn't even know that Arthur had been evacuated. It didn't matter that Alfred's current policy was all but supporting his side. What mattered was that twit was joining the war late. Again. Alfred, it seemed, was plenty happy to leave him alone for the time being, or maybe he was grudgingly repelled by Arthur's cantankerous prickles. Either way, Arthur was on his own against Germany. And just the day before, the rules had changed.

The knock that came on his door was gentle and quick. It was different from the postman's knock. He couldn't explain why his blood ran cold in his veins, or why he almost didn't want to get up and go to the door. But he pulled it open anyway. There was a bicycle leaning up against the fence out front.

There was a little girl on his front step.

"Kirkland?" she asked. He nodded. "Here, sir," she said, holding out a small, buff-coloured envelope. "I'm sorry."

Arthur couldn't bring himself to take it. His mind whirled and rebelled, and his heart _insisted _that if he just didn't take the telegram then it wouldn't be true. But his hand reached out and, shaking, took the envelope from her hand.

_O.H.M.S._

He felt like his heart had stopped. He didn't breathe for a few long moments. He felt like he wasn't physically there at all. Maybe he had stressed himself to death in the armchair by the radio, and this was hell.

No. Not even Hell was this cruel.

He didn't have to open it to know what it meant. It meant what it always meant, no matter what the specifics were, or which family it went to. It meant that his world had just come crashing down around him.

It meant that his Charlie wasn't going to come home.

Arthur didn't remember when the little telegram girl left. He didn't remember closing the door or going back inside. When his mind finally caught up with his body, he was sitting at his kitchen table across from the unopened telegram, hands cupped around a mug of tea like a lifeline. He pursed his lips. He felt completely numb. Not even sad, not even angry. Just...nothing, for a long stretch of time.

His arms were made of lead. He couldn't even bring them to lift the mug to his lips, let alone reach out and open the telegram. He just sat there, staring at it. Part of him marvelled at how such a small, insignificant-looking thing could be such a harbinger of bad news. _O.H.M.S. _ On His Majesty's Service.

Arthur had no idea how long he sat there, staring at the innocuous buff-coloured envelope. His eyes were aching, and his head felt like it had shrunk around his brain, and he was staring but he wasn't really _seeing_. It didn't seem real. It couldn't be real. His baby boy _couldn't_ be dead. His hands clenched around the mug of tea, knuckles going white. He hadn't cried yet. He hadn't broken down. It had gone dark outside in the time that he'd been sitting staring at the unopened telegram. The tea in his hands had long since gone cold. Gooseflesh crawled up his arms, and every inch of him started shaking as he slowly detached one hand from the mug and leaned across the table. The paper slid across his fingers as he brought it back over. He stared at it in his hand for a good long while.

He may have looked calm and collected, but as he opened the envelope, his hands were almost shaking too hard to take the telegram out. Green eyes scanned over the words. Read them once. _Deeply regret to inform you..._ Read them again. _...that your son Fg Off Charles Kirkland has been..._ Then he drew a deep, shaking breath.

It came out as a sob.

_...reported as killed in action._


End file.
